Sinister Design's Craig Stern recently launched a new Kickstarter funding campaign for the upcoming Telepath Tactics, this time seeking $15,000 to fund the completion of the game. The tactical RPG is set in a psionic powered steampunk universe full of unique races and constructs. It focuses combat on "terrain manipulation as much as it does position, facing, and powers."

Telepath Tactics is a turn-based tactical RPG in the tradition of Fire Emblem and Disgaea. Featuring mod support, a robust map editor, and a dialog editor, you can create your own campaigns and download others' off the internet!

On top of single player, Telepath Tactics also features 2-to-6 player local multiplayer matches (i.e. you and your friends playing together in the same room, Super Smash Brothers style).

Telepath Tactics is being developed for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Gameplay

Telepath Tactics borrows the best parts of our favorite tactics games to create a dream team of available strategies in battle.

Throw enemies off of cliffs; push enemies into water or lava; fling friends across gaps; set your enemies on fire; freeze them; blind them; cripple them; stun them; use hit-and-run tactics with cavalry and bowmen; teleport; grab item drops; stick your ranged units on the high ground to boost their effectiveness; the list goes on and on.

Telepath Tactics also brings fresh, brand new new environmental manipulation mechanics to the table. Freeze water and build bridges to create new routes across water or lava; build barricades to brunt an incoming attack; destroy walls, doors and bridges to open up or close off routes of attack; push boulders, barrels and tables in the way to block off certain routes; shoot through open windows; place down explosive charges to create a trap for an unwary opponent. Telepath Tactics supports all of this and more.

Attack damage is 100% predictable, and attacks always hit unless there is some intervening factor (such as the attacker having been blinded, or the target having some special defensive status effect). In this regard, it is very much a game of skill akin to chess. Chance will seldom determine the outcome of a battle; victory depends on you and your wits.

And you'll need all the wits you can get: the enemy AI in Telepath Tactics is aggressive and reactive. The enemy will not just sit around the battlefield waiting for your characters to wander into aggro range or trigger a script—the AI will actively maneuver and seek out ways to get at your most vulnerable characters. It will backstab you, compete with you to grab useful items, break down your barricades, and shove you right into the lava every chance it gets.

Telepath Tactics features 22 unique character classes, each with its own strengths, weaknesses, and battlefield roles. The single player campaign uses unique, named characters based off of these classes, each with its own custom stats and leveling schemes.

On top of all this, Telepath Tactics features extensive mod support that allows you to create custom battles, custom tilesets, custom destructible objects, custom items, custom attacks, custom character classes, and even whole single player campaigns filled with unique characters, enemies, dialog and cut scenes. Everything is stored in easy-to-read files that can be opened by any text editor, so modding is a cinch.

The game also comes with a full-featured map editor to make creating new battles fast and simple. There's even a built-in dialog editor to let you add dialog trees and create cut scenes! Make your own scenarios, or download someone else's: Telepath Tactics supports all of the above.

David Stark recently emailed IMG about his just released indie title, Patent Blaster, for Mac, Windows, and Linux PCs. The sidescrolling shooter was inspired by "the awfulness of patent illustrations" and features an eclectic collection of creatures which players will need to dispatch in a variety of ways including burning, freezing, and dissolving them.

Explode patents. Freeze patents. Set patents on fire. Dissolve them in acid. But they'll fight back. A sidescrolling shooter inspired by the awfulness of patent illustrations.

Fight with randomized creatures based on bad patent art.

Acquire items and weapons with names fresh off Wikipedia.

Burn, freeze, dissolve or just shoot your opponents.

Beware of revenants, thieves, exploders, birthers, and more.

Check out the site below for more information and a demo of the game.
Patent Blaster

Gearbox Software is celebrating St. Patrick's Day with a special Luck of the Zafords in-game event for Borderlands 2. For the duration of the event, which concludes on Sunday, players can acquire green-tinted skins, have an increased chance to collect shield drops, and enjoy boosted shields.

During this time, those who play Borderlands 2 while connected to the internet will see a temporary increase in the drop rates and rarity of shields! Plus, Absorb shields will have a better chance to absorb enemy bullets and Booster shields will have a higher chance of dropping a shield Booster when damaged.

In addition, the Zafords have prepared special gifts! To receive your celebratory Zaford gear, including special green skins for each character and a Chulainn SMG that will be the the same level as (and appear in the backpack of) the first character you load, enter the SHiFT codes below into Borderlands 2:

Stormspire.net recently posted a new interview with Blizzard Entertainment developers about the game's economy, auction house, and professions. The discussion covered a variety of issues including how the developers deal with inflation, catch-up mechanisms for professions, and plans for cross-realm auction houses

4. Are you considering cross-realm auction houses to address the difficulties of getting along in a particularly large or small economy?

A: Yes. We don’t have any announcements to make, but we’re exploring whether it makes sense to merge together the auction houses (or maybe even player trading capability) of realms with small populations, including those with imbalanced faction populations so that the Horde or Alliance presence is small. If we did something like this, we’d do it selectively similar to how we merge lower-level realms with the Cross-Realm Zone feature. We don’t like the idea of region-wide AHs because that removes a lot of the potential for underbidding, cornering the market and so forth.